Service providers often use (or plan to deploy) tunnels to carry some of their multicast traffic (e.g., video). For example, one type of tunnel that may be used is a point-to-multipoint (P2MP) Multi-Protocol Label Switching Traffic Engineering Label Switched Path (MPLS-TE LSP). In some cases, the multicast (video) traffic is carried onto two diverse paths (tunnels) from a source (or “root”) node to each destination (or “leaf”) node of the multicast tunnel (e.g., a “tree”). The destination nodes (e.g., receivers or end-user stations) may then select their particular multicast traffic of interest, thus offering a reliable traffic delivery solution.
Currently, the set of leaf nodes (or “leaves”) is statically configured, such as by a system administrator or other configuration process. A path computation algorithm may then be performed on a head-end node of the tunnel (e.g., the source/root node) based on various constraints, and the resulting P2MP tunnel is signaled/established. Such a solution is effective in terms of bandwidth management, leading to an optimized usage of resources in the network, but is also fairly cumbersome and requires heavy (e.g., manual) configuration of the head-end.